Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Co-Op Review

After 14 years, Baldur's Gate is back with new stuff

119341

The reason you’re probably reading this review is because you’re either wondering if Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition (henceforth BG:EE) is either 1) worth replaying if you’ve played the original, or 2) it's worth playing for the first time if you didn’t play the original. Since BG:EE is actually my first foray with the game, to the former group I can only relate what is different about the Enhanced Edition, which is a good place to start in any case.

BG:EE offers an impressive amount of updates to the game. Perhaps the most immediately noticeable is the updated Infinity engine for the game as well as high resolution and widescreen support. The interface has also been updated visually (but I believe it still functions much the same as the original). BG:EE comes complete with the original game as well as its expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast. A brand new adventure, the Black Pits, has been added as have three brand new companion characters. Also, aspects from Baldur’s Gate II have been brought over, such as class kits, new subraces and subclasses. On top of that, a whopping 400 issues with the original game were addressed during the process of updating it. It’s certainly worthy of the title “Enhanced Edition.”

While knowing the additions and updates from the original to the enhanced edition is probably enough to help former players decide whether they want to purchase it or not, they don’t tell a brand new player how the game actually plays. The rest of my review is mostly geared to new players of Baldur’s Gate, whether it be original or enhanced.

The game pretty much plays the same in single-player as co-op, so this review will be defaulting to a co-op experience. Setting up a game is relatively simple: one player will host by choosing from either the Baldur’s Gate campaign or the Black Pits. Through navigating the menu, it just takes a few seconds to set up a multiplayer game. Currently, only TCP/IP is supported (online matchmaking is in the works), so players will need to get the host’s IP address to connect. This means that you will need to know people who have the game in order to play it in co-op. Make sure to open UDP 47630 via port forwarding on your router. From the lobby, the host can set permissions for each individual player (e.g. allow players to perform dialogue options, pause, etc.) and designate the six character slots to players. No matter how many players are connected to a game, the max party size is six characters, so be sure to divide those slots accordingly. Once everyone is ready, they just have to check the large gold check box next to each of their characters. When all characters have their ready indicator checked, the host can start the game.